[TriLUG] Getting around ISP port blocks with VPN?

[Stephen Bryant via TriLUG]

Hey Brian,

I believe a reverse SSH tunnel would do what you’re looking for. I use one to access my storage server that lives at my brother’s house (lucky bastard with gigabit FTTH…). Basically, the server I have on his network initiates an SSH connection to a Linode VPS I have, listens to any requests made to the Linode on a given port, and then sends those requests to a port on the local server.

As Michael mentioned though, you’ll want to check which ports are actually restricted by your new ISP. For example, the only thing my ISP blocks is port 25. That only matters for email, and I wouldn’t run email on a residential IP anyways, since I can’t control the rdns.

Stephen

> On Jul 22, 2020, at 4:58 PM, Brian via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey Gang,
> 
> I currently have business-class cable internet.  I've been thinking about dumping it for residential fiber.  What I'm trying to figure out is the best way to deal with possible port blocking that might be in place on the residential services.  Having a secured tunnel to some public interface out in the cloud somewhere seems like a possible approach, but I don't really know what words to use to describe it to Google well enough to find people selling such a thing.
> 
> Presently my home server/firewall simply has a public interface with ports open for the services I host.  What I imagine is instead there being a VPN (or some other secure tunnel) to a server in the cloud somewhere through which all my server traffic (i.e. connections initiated from outside) would be routed, thereby sidestepping any port blocks on my local ISP.
> 
> Is this a thing?  What do you call it?  Does anybody on the list already do something like this?
> 
> Thanks,
> -Brian
> -- 
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